Things Given to Tomorrow
by ohtobealady
Summary: December 1962 - Sybbie Branson Langston returns to Downton, and to her beloved Donk, to help her family prepare the estate for its public opening. In the process of organizing what were once private rooms, one seemingly insignificant memento reminds everyone that we are all a part of a story that began long before we were born. (A Cobert Holiday Fanfic)
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One**

 _June 1946_

It was odd, how quiet it was. With all the people in her room, with all the teary eyes watching her shallow breathing, the ears marking the gentle rattle inside of her chest, the lips that quivered only slightly at the end of a short battle no one was quite prepared for … in spite of it all, it was quiet.

Tremendously and beautifully quiet.

Sybbie listened to the contrast of everything; she listened to the small, silent movements that moved the air around her - the sniffling, the sighing, the bowing of heads. She listened to the steady tick of the clock beside the bed, its chirping against the peace of it all. A soft sound, an otherwise comforting sound, but not now. Today it was loud, terribly loud, in the solemn quiet of the room.

She let her eyes drift toward it, toward the little gold clock. She let her eyes drift over the heads of her aunt Mary and of her father as they sat perched on Granny's bed. She let them drift over and away from George as he held onto one of the four posts, his brows pinched together and his mouth turned down as he watched the scene before them. Yes, she let her eyes go to it, to the offending, ticking clock by Granny's side, and she read the time, the second hand rounding the twelfth mark again and again: it was a quarter after ten in the morning.

A quarter after ten.

Somehow, in some strange way, it seemed suitable for Granny. To go at such an hour in the morning. With the warmth of the sun pouring in her sky blue room, the sweet songs of morning birds bleeding with the soft tick of her clock, the delicate scent of the white rose Donk had brought in only three hours before, it not yet drooping in the crystal vase beside her bed, it seemed like Granny. This time of morning, when everything was awake and fresh and the sleepiness of the world had been gently brushed away by the sun, it seemed like Granny. Bright. Warm. Beautiful. Kind.

 _Granny._

Another shift of air, a small tightening of her grandfather's hand against her grandmother's caught her gaze. The duvet's golden threads of silk shimmered in the light.

Donk sat quietly in the chair there, by Granny's side. His arm rested on the bed, his shoulders slumped forward. Sybbie watched as his lips moved over her grandmother's name, and she watched as his eyes roved about Granny's thin outline beneath her bed sheets. She watched as his eyes moved up to her face, her hair that had slowly become more gray locks than dark, her lips that seemed a bit chapped, slightly parted as if she would speak and pink, her eyes that fluttered over the faces of everyone around her, toward the canopy of her bed, and then up, again, to Donk.

"Darling."

It barely moved the air at all, Granny's breath of a word, but Sybbie heard it. They'd all heard it.

And in the echo of the sound, Sybbie's vision blurred. She wiped at her cheeks, quickly, quickly. She blinked away the image of Donk softly stroking her grandmother's hand. She wiped away at the realization that this would soon be it … this would be it. A loss she was not ready to endure, another person she couldn't quite give up. She turned to George and found that he, too, was not ready.

Her cousin, this man who had been to war, who'd flown in planes and counted bombs, he'd stopped bothering to dry his cheeks, his hands held tight to the wooden post, knuckles white. In the sunlight, the glimmer of his tears made him look quite young.

"Any word from Edith and Bertie?"

Aunt Mary's voice, though barely only whispered, shook her and Sybbie pulled in a breath. Of course they weren't all here. Aunt Edith. Her younger cousins. Uncle Bertie. Granny couldn't go, not without everyone.

Everyone. She had to stay here, for everyone.

"Marigold phoned when they were at the station," Uncle Henry's voice answered flatly back. Sybbie lowered her gaze at the sound. "She and the boys took the 8 o'clock. Edith and Bertie were following soon after."

He stood behind her, behind Sybbie, next to Grace, next to Paul, next to those who they'd welcomed into their family in the past half of a year, those they would soon welcome, Grace's hand touching the not yet swollen belly where the future of their family grew. The diamond Sybbie had only just shown them all still cold and heavy and unfamiliar on her finger.

How could she ever be married without Granny? How could George bring his new child into the world without Granny? How could any of them manage without her crooked, knowing grin, the little tilt of her head toward Donk, the gentle, comforting grasp of her soft fingers on their wrists? How could they manage?

How could they?

She wiped at her cheeks again, furiously; she blinked down, she shook her head, she tried to curb her tears as best she could - for Donk's sake as he brought her long fingers to his lips. For Aunt Mary's as she gripped her handkerchief more tightly. For George...for...for Granny. Oh, but it was no use. For Granny, her granny, was dying.

She was dying.

Sybbie swallowed, she wiped, she bit down on the choking sensation of sobs that she did not want to allow. The world seemed to close in around her, in brilliant shimmering light, in sounds of birds, in barely noticeable chirpings of time moving along, thinning the moments she'd ever have left with her grandmother. She swallowed again. She wiped again. She bit, and bit, and bit … and her father moved slightly upon the bed.

He looked over his shoulder to her, his brows dipping, and Sybbie watched, her vision swimming and the light streaking across his face, as he smiled sadly at her and offered his hand.

With a nod, with a change in his own teary expression which glimmered and shone, her father's fingers grasped her own. "Oh, love." She closed her eyes at the strain in his voice. "There's no shame in tears."

And Sybbie frowned, nodding, a soft sob shaking her harder than she liked.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

 _December 1962_

" _Ugh_."

The bed moved beneath her, her husband - long and broad - rocking the antique frame that cocooned them in what little warmth remained of their slumber. Sybbie, her eyes still closed and the blankets pulled tightly to her nose, grinned at his discomfort, knowing all too well the three things Paul would complain about first: the cold, the bed, the formality of breakfast.

"It's freezing."

Sybbie moved the duvet, in a sort of agreement, and curled her fingers more tightly around the green fabric. "Yes," she yawned in return, and then nestled her shoulder down more deeply into the mattress. "It's winter."

" _Ugh_."

"And …" another yawn, "it's quite an old house, Paul." She shifted her weight more on her side, pulling the blankets up further still, marking with some amusement the long sigh that her husband emitted in the curtained darkness of the room.

"As you remind me every year."

"As I remind you every year," she echoed, smirking in spite of her tiredness.

She could hear him grumble, rustling over her shoulder, moving blankets that allowed small whispers of cold air at her feet.

"All the same, they could use some space heaters. Or…" more rustling, more tugging at the heavy blankets, " … modern central heating."

She laughed openly at that, the idea of the mechanic hum of central heating warming the centuries old estate's 300 rooms, her aunt Mary writing the check with a flourish and grin. "Indeed."

"...an electric blanket would've been useful as well. I -"

Sybbie shook her head against the feather pillow, rolling her eyes awake. "- Paul. Paul, darling. Just go and put on your jumper."

"And sleep in it?"

She felt no need to respond, not to this man who knew so much better than he let on. How many years had they been doing this, coming back to Downton for Christmas and New Years, and how many years had he complained of the cold? Much too many to count, now. Fifteen? Sixteen? Blaming his warm bloodedness, she yanked the covers away from him and nearly immediately felt his weight leave the bed. She listened as he shuffled quickly toward the chair near the window and heard as he grumbled, yet again, his complaints.

"I don't want to sleep in my sweater. I shouldn't have to sleep in a woolen sweater, Syb."

There was a pause, a muffling of his voice as he pulled on the offending garment.

"The bed's uncomfortable enough. Scratchy and hard. And creaky, too. Crickets chirping every time I roll over. "

Eventually, however, Paul's grumbles faded away, the sounds of his movements in the room overtaking the annual complaint he seemed to express at every wintry visit. The soft noise, instead, of slippers being shuffled about, a watch being picked up from the bedside table, the deep rustle of the heavy curtain being pulled open for a peek of the sunrise, filled the room instead. And with it, the glow of the light warmed Sybbie's lids.

And it lingered.

"Hmm." Sybbie scrunched her face, pulling the blanket over her eyes. "Paul -"

"Your grandfather..." he was quiet after he said it, and motionless she could tell, as she exhaled softly, knowing what her husband saw. She could clearly picture the scene, the same scene she'd witnessed for sixteen years, every morning … every morning. The steady gait of her elderly grandfather along the gravel path, his hat pulled down, his collar flipped up at the back, his cane falling in a slow rhythm against the earth … like a heartbeat.

Sybbie turned over, then, and opened her eyes. The morning light poured over Paul's sandy features, his fingers holding back the curtain, his green eyes still peering at the figure he saw below.

"He's going to see Granny," she said to the room, both she and Paul knowing full well that was indeed what Donk was doing.

All the same, Paul, quiet and unmoving, nodded at her small voice.

"Yeah," he said with a small smile. "Just before breakfast. Like always."

* * *

The white breast of the horse always fascinated her. Even as a girl.

Sybbie stared up at the lines of the muscles, at the prancing legs, the rounded knees, and squinted her eyes, tracing again and again the curves of the giant portrait she'd memorized in this room, and smiling at the warm familiarity of it all.

No, Carson was not standing to attention to the side, and no Mrs Patmore's kedgeree was not steaming beneath the fresh floral arrangement brought in just hours before, but the same dishes were used, and the same chairs, the same silver coffee kettle and the same porcelain creamer with the small pink roses painted on the side. Turning from the buffet, Sybbie realized, the only thing that had really changed were the faces around her - some older, some new … some absent from the place they resided in her memory.

She smiled at them all, though, as she approached the table with her plate. At George and Grace, Aunt Mary and Uncle Henry, at Dad, at the young ones who had been allowed to eat breakfast downstairs, her cousin reminding his youngest that it was indeed impolite to balance a spoon on one's nose at the table. Sybbie watched as Rory frowned, dropping his spoon to the cloth with a small thud, egg falling away. Uncle Henry's wrinkled wink, however, produced a small grin and Sybbie smiled as that end of the table, her sons included, laughed and squirmed happily in their seats.

The place which remained empty was beside the very head of the table - beside Donk. Sybbie looked at the back of him as she came forward, at the shine in the white of his downy hair, the top thin, but a few wisps of stubborn curls remaining. The width of his shoulders had thinned with time as well, and his very tall, very straight back had now a very slight curve, as if he were, at any moment, going to announce his departure and make to stand. But it seemed that was beginning to grow more difficult for him as well. Even from behind him, she noticed the aged tremble of his still-large hands, the cream serviette not flowing as quickly nor as fluidly to his lap as it may have even the year before, the newspaper still folded neatly beside a plate that she was not sure he made himself. She settled herself neatly into the chair beside her grandfather, her father buttering his toast to her right, Aunt Mary sipping her tea quietly opposite. She felt home again, here, amongst the people who had raised her. These people, those she leaned on and looked to, they were her home really, all lovingly enveloped in the great, cold house they shared for so many years.

Sybbie looked into her plate and chose her fork, piercing a small tomato with its prongs and then at the tomato's weight, letting her wrist fall limp again. In her periphery she could see as Donk peered upward at his family over the rim of his unsteady cup. His eyes blinked over them all, the dozen people who gathered before him, and then down again into his coffee.

"Did you sleep well?"

Sybbie smiled and turned to her father, nodding. Then, committing to the sliced tomato, she pulled it between her teeth.

"Mmm," she answered, and chewed; her father's eyes crinkled with his grin. "And you?" She swallowed and lifted her chin toward him. "Have you settled in properly again?"

Tom nodded back at her, his smile changing from one of cordiality to one of unsaid words, the subject they spoke of still rather sore … still rather not something Sybbie was comfortable discussing. But of course, she knew they must. For the fact was, Donk was growing much older, and there was only so much Uncle Henry could do when George and Grace were in London. After all, Henry was growing older as well. And Dad for that matter.

Sybbie looked down at her own hand, the heel of her palm on the edge of the table, the silver fork she held glinting, and she sighed.

They were all growing older.

"But he's doing well," she heard herself whisper against her better judgment, her eyes flicking toward her grandfather and watching him a moment as he slowly cut his food upon his plate. His thick brow furrowed, his round chin moving slightly as he worked, he suddenly looked his age, and Sybbie knew what an age that was. She looked back to her father. "He is doing well, isn't he? He's healthy."

"He is healthy, love. But … " Her father held her gaze, his voice soft and tentative. His lips parted to say something more, but he did not. Not right away. She watched as he exhaled, his eyes going to Robert, and then back to her, as if he wanted to be sure of something. And when he was, he spoke again, the words barely moving at all. "When the heart is ready, Sybbie, the body will follow."

"No, Dad." Sybbie pressed her lips together, averting her eyes from her father's soft gaze. She picked up her knife in order to distract herself from the heaviness that had settled between her ribs, but she was no longer hungry. She looked to Aunt Mary across from her, her aunt's only granddaughter explaining something to her with delightfully alive gesticulations, her pale eyes shining in the sunlight that danced across her face

"- and I've put them on the piano in the drawing room. Shirley said she'd let the others know not to bother the box there until the people from the paper arrive."

Sybbie brought her gaze down to her eggs. "Donk's fine," she lied to no one in particular, for no one listened save for her father. And he knew the truth. "He's the picture of health for his age," she cut into the center of the yolk, the yellow seeping across her plate. "And his heart _isn't_ ready. Not when he has all of us."

"But he doesn't have her. He's tired of not having her."

She let her fork fall with a clank. "The paper?"

The others at the table turned to Sybbie at her curt interruption, Grace's fork pausing before her mouth, Paul's coffee remaining unswallowed for a moment longer than natural. Aunt Mary, though, nodded at Sybbie, letting her cup fall delicately into her saucer, the only sign of her surprise was her still-dark brow rising for a fraction of a moment.

"Yes," she answered. "They've decided to run a story of the estate preceding the opening. A way to gain interest."

"But it did well in June, didn't it?" Sybbie shifted her gaze from her aunt to her cousin's daughter, and then back again. "That's what drove the final decision to open it permanently, that the house did so well. Wasn't it?"

"Well, that is, that success partly drove the decision, contrary to what _they'll_ tell you."

Sybbie looked at George at the far end of the table that was cluttered with small boys. His blue eyes twinkled as they always did when he knew he was right, which, Sybbie admitted, was far more often than the rest of them. She watched him narrow his gaze toward their grandfather and then nod.

"Mama and Donk are the captains of this ship, steering it as they like. I'm merely the first mate, aren't I, Donk? My opinions do not fill the sails."

"That isn't true." Aunt Mary took a sip of her coffee. "Honestly. Between you and Eleanor, Henry and I are bossed no end."

George rolled his eyes.

"And for that matter, Papa agrees with me, don't you?" Mary turned to Donk, then, catching his attention in the form of his dabbing his lips with his napkin. He lifted his brows as he worked. "It is a very safe investment for the house, George. It needs repairs and if this is the way to ensure that it will be around for generations to come, then I daresay it is worth it."

"I daresay it's mad."

Quiet.

Everyone looked to Donk, watched him as he shakily laid his napkin upon the table and as he pushed his chair out from behind him; Mary's granddaughter, Coco, jumped from her chair to help him.

"What?" Sybbie could hear the bewilderment in Aunt Mary's voice. "Papa, only three days ago you were so terribly pleased with it all."

Sybbie watched the way he patted the serviette in its place, and as he picked up the paper he hadn't yet read, all very slowly, though, a movement taking its time in the space of things, allowing it to be done correctly and with precision. "That was three days ago," he answered evenly. "And today is today."

"Oh, Papa -"

He began to move through, waving Coco away from him as he made his way across the rug to the door. He didn't turn back as he mumbled under his breath, Sybbie catching the words "private" and "intrusion" among the trenchant grumbling.

When he was gone, the dining room remained quiet, only Aunt Mary sighing into her cup, the children around Uncle Henry and George even subdued. Paul whispered Sybbie's name, but she ignored it, and instead looked to where Donk had left them, his soft, but angry words, reverberating in her head.

Coco seemed to hear Sybbie's silent question, and, still standing near Donk's empty chair, she turned toward her, the long dark curl of her ponytail bouncing slightly, her blue eyes a shade darker than before, the excitement in them quieter, nearly snuffed out completely.

"He doesn't want us to open her room." She exhaled. "He doesn't want the public seeing it."

Sybbie knitted her brow. "Whose room?"

"Granny's."

George's voice, though quiet, fell hard on her chest, the heaviness that was there before returning with the terrible sounds of her father's words: _When the heart is ready, the body will follow._

The blue was the same as she remembered. Exactly the same. The golden curtains drawn, the cool midmorning light shining in on the white of the window seats, she could almost see Granny sitting there, her ankles crossed, a book open upon her lap, smiling up at her and extending her hand.

But she wasn't there. No one was. Boxes, and little piles of papers, and a small stack of what seemed to be letters still in envelopes sat in that spot instead, little items that Granny had touched, had saved, lying still where she had sat, where Sybbie could still feel her soft presence, the light jasmine scent, the gentle perfume of roses.

Behind her, her family worked. Grace lifted up a book and squinted at an inscription inside the cover before adding it to the pile upon the bed.

The bed was only a mattress now. No golden duvet.

Coco sat cross-legged on the floor, her back against the bed where a small settee used to be. She flipped through old photographs, pulling from a small trunk and settling them in piles that made no sense to Sybbie. Aunt Mary, perched on the small stool of the vanity and a tiny pair of spectacles perched likewise at the end of her nose, carefully went through a glass jewelry box, a larger safe by her feet.

Sybbie watched as a long string of pearls was pulled from the enclosure, long, so very long, the luster of them shining in the winter light, and a memory of them came to her suddenly, unbidden. It was an odd memory, a sort of dream-like memory of bunting and glasses of punch and speeches. Of people laughing. And applauding. It was a memory of Donk picking her up and kissing her - of Granny taking her from Donk and holding her close, swaying with her.

Granny's voice was harder to remember now, the way she spoke was nearly gone from memory, but the words she had said - the "You've come back, Sybbie" - louder and clearer than anything else. And the feeling of the pearls pressed between them. She remembered that. The pearls. She could feel them, even now, against her stockinged knee, through the coat she wore. She could feel them.

And she saw them as Aunt Mary laid them to rest inside the velvet-lined safe.

"And Coco, _you_ will look after every item you're collecting for the article. You are to keep them somewhere safe…"

George was here now, and Sybbie took in a breath and turned to him. His hair, her milk and honey cousin, was beginning to gray.

"I will, Daddy."

"I mean it, Cor. These things cannot be replaced. Lord knows Donk is upset enough as it is."

Aunt Mary rolled her eyes, dropping the bracelet she held to her lap. "Enough of that. Have you called on Jack? Is he coming to help move the trunks down?"

"He is," George glanced at his watch, and then back again at his mother. "He said Anna was eager to come and see the room, as well. They'll drive over after luncheon."

"Oh, good!" Aunt Mary grinned happily and stood to leave, letting the bracelet fall now back into the glass jewelry box, the diamonds shimmering in the light. "Well, I'm going down. Must be sure when your aunt Edith is coming. Let's go, George."

She took the glasses from her nose, and she folded them neatly in her hand, holding them close. She made to leave, her cashmere cardigan brushing lightly against Sybbie's shoulder and making her smile. The Formidable Lady Mary, as always - never really moving aside for anyone else.

"Oh." Aunt Mary turned and pointed with her glasses toward a golden frame, its portrait covered with a white sheet. "Show Sybbie, won't you?" Mary caught Sybbie's gaze and smiled again, warmly. And then, with a turn and George at her heel, left.

Sybbie furrowed her brow slightly, and frowned in curiosity. "What it is?"

Coco was quick to stand, her eyes bright as they had been at breakfast, her smile playful and delightful. She brushed off her black capri trousers as she spoke, her ponytail bouncing against her green sweater. "Oh, wait until you see, Cousin Sybbie. Daddy and Uncle Tom found it stashed away in the office upstairs - the one with the large shelves of all the leather-bound ledgers." Here Coco pulled away the sheet, and behind it was a girl - a girl sketched there, pencil strokes, dark and light, who could not have been very much older than Coco herself. "It was between two shelves of ledgers from the 1890s."

Sybbie stepped closer and peered down at it; the young woman drawn there sat to the side, her chin pulled subtly toward the artist. Her long neck was bare, the chiffon-like fabric, all drawn in light strokes, fell away from her shoulders; the smile was very soft and only slightly crooked. Sybbie drew her eyes across the tiny curve of her nose, the straight line of her jaw, up to the light shading of the eyes, barely a pencil's touch, leaving them pale and piercing. But kind.

"Cora hated that."

The group of women in the room turned to the door, Donk's voice, though slightly shaky, strong enough to startle them. He walked into the room, speaking as he came inside.

"She had Carson take it down half a dozen times. Though I believe she hid it herself."

Coco laughed. "But why?"

Donk settled into a creamy chair near the window, resting his wrinkled hands upon the arms of it and sighing. "She thought it unlike her."

"Is it unlike her?"

Coco turned back to the portrait, studying it as it rest upon the floor, leaned against the fireplace. Sybbie saw her turn, but she did not. Sybbie's eyes remained on her grandfather, at the long, silent exhale his thinned shoulders heaved, at the way his glassy eyes, like a clouded winter sky, stared at the portrait from a distance, and the solemn shake of his head.

"No. It isn't unlike her."

Grace was quiet by the bed, and still. Sybbie, too, remained still and silent watching with an ache somewhere inside of her chest as Coco nearly bounced toward the little piles of photos she had stacked all around her, picking up a collection and bringing them with glee to her great-grandfather.

Donk removed a pair of glasses from his shirt pocket, his hands shaking as he placed them unsteadily on his nose. He blinked down at the photographs that Coco shoved into his hands, angling his round chin backwards, his brows rising at he studied the faces of years and years ago.

"I wasn't sure who they were, Donk. This one here. And this fellow." She pointed to relatives that Sybbie could not see from this distance, and she heard Grace began to move behind her, returning to her sorting. "I thought that maybe this was Granny Violet -"

"No. That is Aunt Roberta. My cousin, Susan. The man there is … well, it is Shrimpie."

Coco pulled the photo from him, and pointed to another. "Then, who is this here?"

Sybbie watched Donk's eyes narrow for a moment, his eyes scanning the image captured in his hands. "I - well … it's James. I believe … I'm not -"

His voice shook, as his hands had done, and Sybbie felt the ache move into something different, something more like panic, something more like eagerness to go to him and hold him to her as he had done for her so many times before.

"Mum, should we keep this one out, then? Or perhaps no?"

"I'm not sure. Sybbie -"

But Coco had moved that photo away as well, holding it against the one of Shrimpie, collecting people in her left hand who she'd never met, who she'd never know, who didn't matter to the article.

Who didn't matter now.

"And these?"

Sybbie watched Donk's eyes blink again, harder, his mouth turned down, shaking the deeper the corners of it dipped. His brow thick and furrowed trembled.

"It's from Granny's trunk," Coco climbed onto the arm of the chair, she leaned down close to her Donk; she pointed to the photograph that he held tightly in his trembling hand. "Is it in New York? There's only a date on the back - April 1889. But that does look like New York, doesn't it?"

Grace sighed at the bed. Sybbie could hear her place a final book onto a stack and then stop. "Coconut?"

"Hmm?" Coco glanced up at her mother; Donk's eyes lingered on the photo he held.

"Won't you take over for me here, darling?"

Grace shifted her gaze from her daughter to Sybbie, and Sybbie could detect a small nod, a message unheard but very easily understood.

 _Donk._

"You'll finish sorting the books? Ones to go downstairs here. The ones for storage just here, and then the loveliest ones for the room. Yes?"

Coco nodded at her mother, and slid from the arm of the chair. Donk did not seem to notice.

Sybbie watched as Coco went to the books, as Grace rubbed her shoulder and moved away, placing a hand on Donk's arm as she left. Again, he did not respond. He remained in the past of the photograph. Looking at it. Turning it over in his shaking hand and reading the limited inscription.

Sybbie blinked her eyes away from him and to Coco at the bed. Her cousin held up a green, leather book, gilded ivy creeping up the front, the word _Lady_ glistening in the cold sunlight as it was tossed haphazardly into a pile: Storage.

She turned away from her and back to Donk. She forced herself to move toward him, her heart reaching him long before her hands could. She crouched before him, her fingers on his knee, and she peered up at his shifting eyes.

"Donk?" Nothing. "Are you tired? Would you like to rest? I'll take you to lie down."

"I can't remember." His voice was even, younger it seemed, but terribly, terribly hollow. Sybbie swallowed down the tightening of her throat. "It's not New York … it's … it's Newport. And this is …"

Sybbie frowned at the wipe at his eyes, the press of his fingers against his lids. "Oh, confound it. Cora's aunt. It's the Newport house and Cora's aunt. Her … her beloved aunt, I can't recall …"

But Sybbie sat before him, helpless. She didn't know. She hadn't learned Granny's aunt's name. She barely knew she had one at all, the only mention of her had been once when she had mentioned Paul had family in New York. But that was sixteen long years ago, a passing mention, and now the woman whom her Granny adored smiled up at them, sunlight kissing her strangely familiar features, nameless forever more.

Donk dropped the photo to his other knee. His eyes stared into some unseen middle distance.

"Come on, then." Sybbie stood, she held out her hand, she sighed a smile. "I'll have Shirley bring up a cuppa, hmm? I could do for a cuppa; couldn't you?"

But he didn't move. Not exactly. Donk looked up at her and then down again, toward the photograph.

"Cousin Sybbie, if you're going down, you'll bring down that paper there, closest to the vanity? Please?"

Sybbie turned away from Donk and toward Coco. The girl smiled sweetly up toward them, her eyes glancing to Donk and smiling softer to him. Sybbie felt irritation creeping into her joints, but of course her young cousin was not to blame. Coco meant well. She did. But the fact remained that she was only a sixteen year old child, unaware of the history that surrounded her. Unaware of the history that made up who she was.

"It's waste, but Mum took down the basket yesterday and I've forgotten to bring it up again."

Sybbie nodded, though she didn't want to. She collected the pile of paper from the window seat, all various sizes, various shapes, receipts of purchase and small scribbled notes, crumbled and forgotten. She picked them up, and gathering them into her hands, stood beside Donk as he scanned the paper odds and ends.

"Let's go down, then? Hmm?" Sybbie tipped her head toward him, her bob tickling at her neck. "You heard that Anna is coming, haven't you? I'm sure she'll want -"

"- Stop."

Sybbie stopped, she held the paper outward to where Donk reached, his white brows furrowed and vexed.

"This isn't waste. This." He pulled from her grasp a little paper, small and rectangular with words written in loopy uneven penmanship - a strange little list - a sharp line at the bottom there, Donk's unmistakably precise handwriting beneath. Sybbie moved her thumb in order to allow the paper's release, clumsily really, trying to prevent the smaller more irregularly shaped items from falling out before it. She was mostly unsuccessful as Donk removed his paper, and as the little papers fell, Sybbie watched as he froze.

His face was white.

"Donk?"

He stared at the paper near his feet, the deep wrinkles in his forehead deepening further, his frosted eyes growing clearer the longer he stared.

The little yellowed rectangle, barely the width of Sybbie's palm, lay face up on the floor. It was careworn, folded once, maybe twice, faded and tired. The once straight edges of the thing were blunt now, softer, showing its age. The printed words GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY whispered up at Sybbie's eyes, KING'S CROSS STATION followed, and the smaller signature of _Robert Crawley_ scribbled below a line that read First Class.

Still, Donk did not move.

But, uncertain and confused, Sybbie did.

She leaned down to the paper and made to pick it up from the carpet, her fingers brushing the worried little ticket stub, but stopping at his touch.

Donk's frail and trembling hand lightly touched her own, his eyes still moving over the ticket again and again. "The date?" he asked quietly, and Sybbie leaned toward him.

"What?"

"The date there. On the ticket?"

She read it silently from the floor and then pressed her lips. "But why?"

Donk peered up at her, though, almost like a child. His skin looked so thin, his face sunken, his nose and chin round, and yet, and yet everything seemed so frail.

Sybbie sighed. "16th of December. 1890."

His hand trembled when he held it out, and Sybbie blinked at him, stooping to the floor and picking up the little yellow ticket, placing it in his palm. He held it as one would hold a petal.

Coco came nearer, she peeked around Sybbie, Sybbie could sense her there, but her eyes remained fastened on Donk as he stared down at the little paper resting in his shaking hand.

His mouth formed her name, and Coco touched Sybbie's arm.

 _She kept this._

Robert read the date again, and again, images of her - soft, young … God, they were so terribly young … flickered in his mind. The golden duvet. The glow of firelight. The warmth of her head, her face buried in his neck, her fingers clinging to his coat, he could almost feel them now. But she was not here. Their grandchild. Their great-grandchild stood before him. She was not here.

 _She kept this._

He hadn't known she had. How she got it, how she saved it, he didn't know. He'd never know. But he knew what it was. Of course, he knew what it was.

"This isn't waste."

His voice, somehow, didn't seem like his own. When did it become so thin, so quivering? When had this happened? When? What had happened to the years? Were they still in this room, trapped, cramped and crumbled in the long fingers of his granddaughter. His great-granddaughter.

 _Cora._

No. No. He moved to stand. His knees hurt. His back straightened slower than his brain commanded.

"None of these things are waste."


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

 _July 1890_

Robert had entered her room with another quick pull to the silken tie of his dressing gown. The blue of her space was warm, as it always was this time of night, bathed in candlelight. The gold of the drapes and the peachy hue of the duvet flickered around him, glinting and shimmering. The flowers, roses still fresh and white from a recent clip, made him feel, for a moment, like he had entered one of the fairy gardens Rosamund had sketched when they were quite young.

But it was no garden.

It was anything but a garden, especially tonight.

For the longer he listened to her, her softly measured words, the heavier Robert felt himself grow in the cream-colored chair near her window. He practiced deep breaths. He stretched his fingers over the short silken arms, and then straightened them wide and taut. He could feel the aggravation in his joints, the vexation like a pulse in the tips of his digits, and he let out one long breath.

"Cora."

He hadn't expected this. When he came into her room smiling and nodding and attempting some strange, forced small talk about his day, he hadn't expected the graveness of her features, the tension in the way her tall, slender body had stood awkwardly near her cold fireplace, seemingly waiting on him.

He knew now that she was, indeed, waiting on him.

"You're upset." He blinked down at his knees draped in his dressing gown. "Someone has upset you, and now you're saying things you don't mean."

He let the silence between them grow for an uncomfortable length before glancing upward at her, at where she now stood beside her bed, her long, white fingers touching the shimmering duvet covered in lace, her face - her skin as smooth and flawless as milk crystal - quiet and unmoving. She kept her eyes downcast, the long black fringe of lashes fluttering at the small shift of her gaze toward the rug.

"You speak out of … frustration. You can't mean it," he said again.

He watched as she shook her head, the red ribbon in her dark curls falling from her shoulder.

"No." She looked up to him, then, squarely, and repeated herself. "I've thought about it, Robert, and I think it best for now."

He felt his brows furrow. "But to wait? I don't understand."

"You don't want to understand."

The evenness, the quiet of her voice prickled the annoyance further. It flared inside his chest. It burned, and Robert buried his fingers in the arms of the chair.

"I don't understand, Cora, because it doesn't make any sense. Why on earth should we wait?"

The burn, it was a fire. And Robert let it lick at his lips, he let it cast its smoke in his eyes, and he found himself looking about her, incredulously, as if she were the one burning down the small house of hope he'd built inside his chest.

"I have been trying to expla-"

"We have a duty to perform, an obligation!"

Her eyes came to his again, and Robert saw in them an unmistakable grit, a stronghold in the clear blues of them, as if his wife had rooted herself to those words and was clinging to them.

"Yes." Her voice was terse, but soft; it angered him all the more. "So you keep saying."

"And what do we tell Mama? Hmm?" He shifted in her chair, he angled his elbows upon the arms of the thing, uncomfortably leaning upon them. "And Papa?"

He paused for only a moment as her eyebrows twitched, as if something he had said had stung her.

"Papa was expecting you pregnant when we returned from honeymoon. To have it all finished. Secured." He swallowed. He shifted again. He spoke out to the airy walls of her bedroom. "Am I to tell him that now you've decided your independence more important? Now that we've been married for nearly half a year, am I to tell him that you've decided against it all; that you'd like to wait?"

"I've not decided against it. Not in the least. You know how I look forward to it. As I explained, I -"

Robert stood from the chair, the candlelight behind him throwing his dancing shadow over his silenced wife. "For God's sake explain it, again, Cora! For every word that has passed your lips thus far has been met with nothing but confusion in me!"

His outburst startled her, he knew it, for he watched her eyes blink rapidly for a moment, and then she began again, stumbling softly over her words, her fingers touching the fabric of her duvet and then stretching out tensely to her sides.

"It's only we've tried for nearly six months without any success. Perhaps if we rested? If we gave it a moment's rest. I do feel so very tired of -"

"You're tired?" He took a step toward her vanity and then looked back to her, shaking his head, narrowing his gaze, his chest all aflame. " _You're tired_? Do you have any idea of how selfish you sound? How very selfish you're being?"

She stood still. But her voice was even stiller. "It isn't selfish. I'm not being selfish."

"You are." Robert's eyes widened. He nodded, sure of himself. For she was. How could she not see that she was? "Because of your own frustration, you've decided that this is what best for us. This isn't about us, Cora. This isn't about you."

"It's not about _us_?" And now the fire that Robert had felt inside his chest was growing at his wife's slippered feet. He could feel it there. Her eyes were alight with it. "This isn't about me?"

But he spoke over her all the same. "We have the entail to think of. Papa's already asked questions. We must do our duty -"

"Don't I have a say in any of it? I'm the one who will be carryin-"

"I must conceive an heir, Cora!"

"And we will!"

A shout. It was a shout, and Robert held his breath. Cora's chest heaved up and down tumultuously, but not in anger.

No. Robert could see that.

It wasn't anger, but perhaps … perhaps fear.

"But not yet. I won't." She shook her head again, and Robert stared at her. "Not yet. Not until I'm sure."

He wanted to remain silent, as he turned away from her, as he looked over her silver brush handle, and the little glass jewelry box that sat upon her vanity. He thought to remain silent, everything in his brain called for it, asked him to, everything. But his curiosity, and his petulance, forced his tongue.

"Sure?" He echoed back toward her, lifting his chin at her mirror and stool; he sniffed, irritably. "Sure of what? That you haven't made some horrific mistake?"

He looked to his feet briefly instead of her, not wanting to see her response, and then again to that tiny glass box, that silver brush, her mirror. But her reflection in her vanity gave him her answer. The answer he knew, really.

She stared at him, her face solemn and perfect. Her eyes stayed fastened, unblinking, on him. Her pink mouth remained a long, straight line.

It was a question she would not honor. It was a response she would not answer aloud, and Robert felt shame in his saying it.

Exhaling, he turned to her.

The volume that was in the room, that reverberated off of her blue walls, that shuddered over the golden thread of her curtains, it had completely evaporated, and in its place remained intimacy. Not the warm intimacy made of gentle touches and smiles. The intimacy of honesty. Of nakedness. Of bearing one's soul, and feeling a rush of heat.

At last, it was Cora who moved.

"In the end, Robert, it will be a child." She searched his eyes with her own, and Robert felt smaller beneath their gaze. "The duty. The obligation. The heir you speak of … it'll be a child."

She paused, and she let out a gentle breath.

"Our child."

There was another pause, and in it - oh in it - she searched his eyes again, the pale blue of hers seeming to look for something, something in his own, that he did not understand. He didn't understand. And when she did not find it, he watched her swallow and look toward her walls, blinking again.

"I … I'd like so much to have a baby, Robert. But you see we -" she interrupted her quiet voice with a quick inhale. "Oh, we hardly know one another."

"Of course we know one another."

But Cora shook her head. And she looked at him. "Carnal knowledge isn't really knowledge of someone. Not really."

Again, there was quiet between them, but it was her quiet. It was very plainly her quiet, and Robert waited for her to continue, his heart pulsing quickly behind his ribs.

"I want to wait." She lifted her chin, suddenly, resolutely. "I don't want to try again until … until I'm ready."

And his heart, his quickly beating heart, it faltered. He stumbled backwards two steps. He clenched his jaw, angrily. Suddenly angrily again, and lifted his brows.

"Very well," he clipped. "As you'd like," he spat again. He tightened the tie around his waist, he pulled down the front of his robe. He squared his shoulders and looked at her, stared at her, and frowned. "Then I won't bother you anymore."

Her face had fallen as he said it, as he turned away - he saw it - but he didn't care. He was retreating. He was going to his dressing room. He was slamming his door. He wanted to rip away his dressing gown, to fall into his bed, to punch his pillow, and to not see her face as he tried desperately to fall asleep.

But he could not. Of course he could not. For he ... he didn't want to wait. He didn't want to postpone it any longer, and the thing she'd said about it being a child ... about it being _their_ child, he ... he knew that, didn't he?

Didn't he?

Why? Why was he suddenly so angry and so hurt and so ... so acutely ... broken-hearted.

He was broken-hearted.

Because he cared. Damn it all, he did.

He cared.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

 _December 1962_

He looked at it, stared, marveled at the neatness of his handwriting there: his signature. His younger self was somehow immortalized in this aged yellow ticket, and the scrawl of his name drew him in to find himself, his former, younger self, still somehow alive within him. It was the self that still answered to the name signed sharply there on the line, a self who came before Robert Grantham.

 _Robert Crawley._

It seemed strange to look at it now, what was once his name, written there without his title, and without the involuntary tremble in his thick, knobby knuckles. They were fingers that he suddenly did not even recognize when by chance his eyes accidentally fell on them. The soft afternoon light mocked the wrinkles that puckered over the threadwork of veins on the back of his hand, and he looked away, back toward the library, but not really back to present.

He found things increasingly more difficult to recognize, to understand now. Even as he sat opposite his eldest granddaughter and her husband, who seemed to be going on and on about something that Robert did try to pay attention to, though that seemed to be in vain. It was not for loss of hearing, though that was usually at least partly the case, and it was not solely because attentiveness seemed quite fleeting nowadays, rolling in and then slipping away as it pleased, like a fog. No; it was not really due to any of the usual things he'd decided clouded his recognition and understanding of the things around him. Today it was nothing other than _her._

It had been her hand which had tucked the ticket away, her heart which had seen it for all that it was: a promise, their hope - his love. Oh, and how it was his love. Another treasure locked away in the faded little ticket, nestled there beside his youth, was the moment it was finally made clear, the moment that they both understood how very much in love they were. Looking at it made him ache for her. The tip of her head. Her smirk. A small greeting in the way of the glow in her eyes when he passed through the dividing door.

She wasn't there now. Her room was empty, without her. It was rummaged through. The private moments within her walls all somehow tainted by the touch of someone else's hands. Even if it was their great-grandchild.

 _Cora._

Ancient as he was, he had recognized this - the ticket. He recognized it. And with Sybbie glancing up at him, and her husband Paul now laughing at his own poor joke, Robert's fingers brushed over the yellow of the past and swept it into his palm, the nest of his hand placing it safely back into the pocket of his coat, close to his tired heart.

* * *

" - and the price for pine is high at the moment, especially in Georgia and Alabama. There's a man - Beauregard - that we've been in talks with, too, so there's promise to grow further still." Sybbie looked away from Donk at her husband's pause, a pause in which he took a sip of his coffee - he had never taken to tea - and shook his head with the momentum to continue. "And the boys like Atlanta, I think. And Syb," he smiled over at her, and she grinned, then looked back at Donk. "Plus it is certainly a lot warmer there."

Donk's rumble of a chuckle surprised her, for she wasn't entirely sure he was listening, or cared to be listening, and she found herself smiling again.

"That I can imagine." Donk took his cup up, the way Paul had done before, "And I'll admit I'm glad to hear you're doing well, battling your nation's forests -"

"Donk -"

" - though why you can't manage it from here is beyond me."

Sybbie sighed and let herself continue, passing a quick reassuring glance to her husband before she lowered her chin at her grandfather. "Paul's not battling trees, Donk; it's a lumbering company, which you very-well know. And secondly, it would be impossible to run it from overseas. We discuss this every year; it's his family's company and it is in Paul's hands now. He takes great pride in it, and we must support that -"

Donk pushed out a small part of a laugh, bringing his trembling tea to his lips. "You sound very much like your mother."

Sybbie only stared, her mother not often mentioned by anyone but Dad, and the words echoing around her sounding like someone else's entirely. It left her wanting something to busy herself with, so she picked up her cup and saucer. And she took a sip.

Quiet settled as the three of them drank their tea and coffee, and in that quiet, Sybbie heard the distant sounds of greeting in the hall - cheerful voices, hands being shook, coats and scarves being taken away and put aside. She lifted her chin and twisted around over the top of the sofa, watching for warm shapes beyond the door. And presently, she heard as footsteps drew nearer.

"Papa?"

Sybbie put down her cup and saucer on the little side table there, and Paul, too, stood to place his next to Donk's on the large table near the window. Aunt Mary was smiling as she turned to reveal the few people walking in after her.

"Robert," Tom maneuvered through the small bundle of people, "Anna's here, and Jack. They've come to help move some things, and to see the room."

"Anna."

Sybbie stood, and in her periphery saw as Donk, with his shaking limbs, stood slowly as well, using the table to anchor himself.

"Hello, Lord Grantham." Anna came forward, and Sybbie grinned at her small, slender form. She hadn't seen her aunt's former maid in several years, but she would know her anywhere. Her white hair cropped close and curled, the apples of her cheeks still rosy as she smiled, her eyes twinkling up at Donk, she looked very much how Sybbie remembered her - joy personified.

"How are you?" Donk smiled and looked around at everyone before back to Anna and her son. "And Jack. You remember Sybbie, and Paul?"

Anna turned toward her and Sybbie felt six years old again, holding out her arms. "Of course I remember Miss Sybbie." Anna came to her and took her hand, pressing it between her own. "And Mr Langston," she turned to him nodding, "you look very well! Where are your children?"

"Henry and Ms Shirley have them all bundled and corralled in the gardens somewhere," Paul laughed and the others laughed too. "Though you'd hardly recognize them, Anna. Even Benjamin is this tall now." He held his hand to his hip.

"Baby Benjamin? Really? Oh, but they do grow so very fast, don't they. Jack's youngest are not really very young anymore themselves." Anna turned to Mary who shrugged with a small smile and then spoke again to Donk. "It must be very nice, Lord Grantham, to have your family home again for Christmas? And I hear Lady Edith is coming in soon?"

"In a few days, yes," Sybbie's father leaned in to answer, smiling. "And Eleanor is coming in from France as well."

"Oh, I know Jack would enjoy seeing her, if he may."

Anna's tall son nodded, and Sybbie stepped closer toward him. "I thought you lived in London now, Jack. Are you home on holiday?"

"No, no." Jack turned his cap in his hand and twisted to meet everyone's gaze. "Heather and I are back in the village. Leasing out her grandmother's old place now. It's a cake shop, if you'll believe it."

There was a chorus of good wishes and happy exclamations, and Sybbie's eyes drifted toward her grandfather who was watching all of this quietly.

"Anyway, we should be getting on, then. George is upstairs finishing up a few things, and we don't want to waste any more of Anna's time." Tom announced and Sybbie saw as Anna shook her head.

"No, Mr Branson -"

"Tom," he corrected.

"- Tom." She smiled. "It's always so nice to come back. To see." There was another small quiet, then, as Anna turned back to Donk. He looked down at her and extended his hand. She took it very briefly, a gesture that made Sybbie hold her breath, like a crossing of deep, cold water, time washing over her and then quickly flowing away. "Thank you, your Lordship," Sybbie could hear Anna say quietly, only to him. "I'm glad to see you've opened it, if it's not impertinent to say. I am. I'm very glad."

Robert could say nothing. Sybbie saw as he struggled until at last, he nodded, "It's not impertinent." Anna nodded back, and as she turned, Donk continued softly. "You'll send my regards to Bates."

Sybbie watched as Anna stood still, as the rose in her cheeks fell pale. Quiet.

"Next time we're there, Lord Grantham." Jack touched his mother's elbow. "We'll be sure to say a word, next time we're there."

 **...**

Sybbie was the last to enter the room, making sure that Paul would stay downstairs with Donk to meet the children and Uncle Henry. When she reached Granny's room, greetings had already taken place and small little explanations were being shared.

The work that had been done in the interval between this morning and now was remarkable, the organization nearly complete. Anna seemed to think the room was remarkable as well, her lips spreading into an easy smile as she stood in the blue center. Sybbie watched as she nodded in appreciation and as she smiled over at Mary who tipped her head, and feeling pleased, closed her eyes in a way that was classically Aunt Mary.

"We've worked tirelessly for at least four days going now," Coco had stood from her spot on the floor, two neat stacks of photographs collected by her feet, and smiled at the older woman. "But I think we're nearly there."

"Nearly," Grace echoed from her station. She waved a lovely-bound book before arranging it with some others.

"We've done quite a lot, though it may not seem so." Aunt Mary gestured toward the bed. "And I'm still in search of something that will do there. Mama's original bedclothes are rather difficult to replicate."

"And His Lordship?" Anna looked between Tom, Mary, and George. "How has he taken it all?"

George sighed. "He hasn't, really. He comes in and out, grumbles something about things being in their proper places -"

"He has helped me, you know," Coco interrupted, and George sighed again.

"I'm sure it is difficult, Master George. I'm sure he rather feels as it's an invasion of his space," Anna lifted a shoulder in thought. "I think I may feel something similar, should someone want to tour my home. Or take a look at Mr. Bates's things."

"But Anna, they aren't Lady Grantham's things. Not really. We're putting away the truly private items while still finding a way to make her room as it was. His Lordship will see that in time." Sybbie saw as Aunt Mary looked to Dad for support, but found none. "Anyway, the house was very successful when it opened this summer past. And with the Mercia being one of the finest rooms, it's a shame not to give it life again. It cannot continue to dwell in the dark."

At last, Tom spoke. "That I agree with."

Aunt Mary nodded once. "Now, if we're quite finished, come have a look at this." She seemed to brush away the previous conversation the way she always did, with a definitive flourish that meant no one else would broach the topic again. Sybbie had to admire her as she walked toward the far window, her narrow shoulders straight and her chin high. Aunt Mary directed Anna's attention to Granny's portrait, and George crossed the room toward Sybbie as they spoke. "We found it in an upper floor bookkeeping room."

Anna followed. "Is that Her Ladyship? It looks nearly like Lady Sybil. Or even you, at second glance."

Aunt Mary laughed lowly, bending to take the frame and angle it in the light. "I'll admit that the older I grow the more I accept our resemblance. Though it is rather odd." Her eyes scanned the portrait, Granny's eyes seeming to follow as the frame was tilted more into the light.

"Odd, Lady Mary?" Jack laughed.

Aunt Mary twisted round to see him. "Odd how one can look so similar from someone so very different in nature."

"You aren't so very different, my lady," Anna tipped her head, and Sybbie saw Mary shoot a warm, but doubtful glance upward at her.

"We won't argue."

"Here," George's voice was near Sybbie's ear and she turned sharply to him, now ignoring the conversation blooming near the framed sketch. "Look at this. You'll laugh."

A photo was pushed into her hand, the backside up with the date _Giza_ _1892_ pencil-scratched in Donk's narrow script. She glanced toward George as she flipped the photo and saw he was already grinning. Sybbie rolled her eyes and looked down.

Atop two camels, the Sphinx rising behind them, were her grandparents. Her grandfather, tall in the saddle nestled between the humps of one great camel, had his chin high, and to his left, her grandmother. Granny's great hat shaded part of her face, but Sybbie could see that she was smiling, and brightly. Her grandparents, their Egyptian guides holding tightly to the leads of the camels, and the camels themselves all stared into the lens of the camera, and up at Sybbie.

George was right. She snorted a laugh, and shook her head. "Where did you find this?"

"The second trunk in an unused diary. There were some others, albeit none quite like this." He took the picture away, and chuckled at it. "My, but camels are ridiculous looking animals, aren't they?"

Sybbie laughed again at her cousin, "Are you saving it for the article?"

"We should, rather," he joked. "Here, astride his noble steed, the fifth Earl of Grantham." He held the photo at arm's length and they both laughed again.

" - Tom, we've finished discussing it."

Sybbie stopped at her father's name, and she looked around the photo as the quiet discussion from outside her conversation seemed to become louder than their laughter.

George glanced toward her, and lowered the photograph of their grandparents as his mother spoke again.

"Papa is absolutely in his right mind. I don't know why you insist on arguing -"

"I'm not arguing; I'm merely asking Jack what Heather did for her grandmother when the time came. It may help us as it gets worse."

"It won't get worse. There isn't anything to get worse."

Sybbie swallowed a tightening in her throat and looked over at George. He pinched the bridge of his nose.

Meanwhile, Coco stood closer to Grace, listening with wide eyes, and Dad spoke in low tones next to Anna and Jack, Aunt Mary shaking her head.

"Tom, really. I'm sure he meant respects."

"Send my _respects_ to Bates? Mary, it won't hurt to just admit it. It is happening, though it may be painful -"

"I'm not in the habit of admitting to things I don't believe." Aunt Mary lifted her chin, much in the same way that Donk had done all those years ago in Egypt. "You agree with me, don't you, Anna?"

Aunt Mary's former lady's maid exhaled, and Sybbie furrowed her brow at Anna's hesitation. "It did sound, my lady, as if he meant to say hello to him, as if Mr Bates were still with us. But of course His Lordship has grown quite old, perhaps he mixed his words -"

"Oh," Aunt Mary huffed away. "Lord Grantham meant _respects_ , not regards. And even if he had indeed meant what he said, I'm sure he only wanted to speak with some sensitivity. He's very fond of Anna."

No one spoke, and beside Sybbie, George lowered his head and cleared his throat in agitation.

"Besides, it's a waste of time, to go over it all again. Regardless of what Tom may think -"

"- Mary."

"Lord Grantham is perfectly normal. For Heaven's sake, he's ninety-four. Surely he's allowed some mistakes. Come on, Jack. Since it seems we're done here. This is the trunk to go down."

The others moved at Mary's voice, Jack pulling the cap onto his head and George giving the photograph back to Sybbie and walking over to help Jack with the closed trunk. Coco quietly moved back to her place, Grace touching her arm lightly as she left her side. And Anna took one last look around the room before following Mary and the two men out, nodding goodbye to Grace and waving at Coco.

She passed Sybbie, and like the pull of a current, Sybbie began to move behind her, but the words her father had said gave her pause. She halted, and sensing Tom as he came in close at her side, she pulled in a breath and shook her head.

"He's fine, Dad." She said without looking toward him. For a reason she wasn't sure of, she shook her head again. "I don't know what you're trying to imply, but Donk is fine."

* * *

His fingers fished in his dressing gown pocket until he found it. He softly pulled it from the silk pouch and placed it delicately on the glass case of snuff boxes. The case was no longer near a window, for Robert no longer slept in the room beside hers. He'd moved to the other side of the house, near Tom's room, under the selfish guise of needing a larger room. But really, there was another selfish reason, and nothing at all to do with the size of the bed in which he slept. In his old room, her room, he could not find rest. It smelled too much of her and yet not quite enough like her to let him sleep.

So that winter, the winter Grace had their first great-grandchild, the first winter without Cora to make a spectacle of Christmas, the way she always did, Robert had moved away from her room and to his own. His prized snuff boxes had come with him; the photographs he kept in his dressing room had stayed. Her soft smiles hurt too much.

Carefully, Robert spied a crooked corner of the ticket in the dim firelight of his room, and he smoothed it out under the strange softness of his thumb that had once been so coarse. It obeyed and Robert sighed, the breath even trembling in his lungs, a direct effect, he was sure, of it being entirely too late for someone his age to be awake.

The day had been long. Dinner had been longer, conversation stiff and feeling rather like a staged production of some terrible play in which the characters aren't even sure of who they are. He'd excused himself early, and Coco had laced her hand in the crook of his aching elbow all the way up the stairs.

Creaking slowly down to his bed, he let out a breath as his legs were finally allowed to relax, and he let his feet slowly shake away his house shoes. His stiff fingers unlaced the knot of his dressing gown.

His mind ran images over and over of the day, images of his great-grandchildren as they came in from their walk: George's young Rory showing him the grand stick he'd spirited away from the wilderness, Sybbie's Alexander grinning madly at the scrape he earned at his smooth elbow, Theodore, the eldest of the great-grandsons, was growing more like Sybbie every year. His blue eyes contained purpose, determination. So very much like Sybbie.

 _He takes great pride in it, and we must support that._

Her words echoed around his head as he laid it to rest upon his pillow.

 _We must support that._

Her voice had grown. It had moved and changed into a voice so familiar to him, so painfully familiar to him, that it caused his fingers to feel empty without the touch of the little ticket that lay upon the glass case across his room.

Sybbie had sounded exactly like Cora _._


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

 _late August 1890_

He loved the little blue one, the oval "Bristol" blue one, with the small white huntsman and dog running across the top. He loved to take it out and look at it closely, examine the little hinges and the gilt metal that mounted the porcelain lid. He loved to arrange it back just so and then peer at it, a certain warmth stirring behind his ribs.

But hours ago, after admiring the small blue box, he'd not felt warmth at all. On the contrary, he felt a coolness, a decided frigidness in that space behind his ribs, and he supposed he knew why. After all, Cora had given him the snuff box. In nothing but a selfless want to make him glad, she'd given him the box.

Shortly after their marriage, after only being wed a moment longer than a month, they'd celebrated his birthday amid the quiet awkwardness of their honeymoon. While he was out with those distant cousins Mama had procured lodging with in the south of France, Cora had found the gift in a little shop. She'd given it to him that night, after they'd all gone to bed, in a tiny string-wrapped box, the shop's tinier pink card christened as her own by her loopy script on the back: "For your twenty-second year, and every year hereafter. Your Cora."

He wasn't sure where the card was now, stuffed away in some drawer or book, but the sentiment of it, the sentiment of the snuff box ten paces away, chilled him through and through.

So, though it was not yet autumn, and feeling rather like he had every authority to do so, he had asked Walters for a fire. He'd gone off to his washroom pushing away the thought of her and pleased that he'd be warm when he eventually emerged from the bath. But like everything in his life at the moment, he was now completely and utterly filled to the brim with regret. For, Walters had arranged the scullery maid to do just what Robert had asked, and now - regret of regrets - Robert stared at the crackling in the fireplace of his dressing room, the flames jumping all around him, much too hot.

Inside and out, he was much too hot.

It had been seven long, uncomfortable weeks since he left Cora's room, her decision still ringing in his ears. It had been nine even longer weeks since he had touched her, since she'd touched him, and now the tender places of his body that missed her most ached in a strange, restless way. He felt altogether angry, frustrated and annoyed, even, at the licentious thoughts he thought, at the unspeakably undignified dreams he dreamt. Her hair splayed across his chest, her exposed skin glowing in the firelight, the way she felt around him, warm and wet and impossibly glorious.

But no. There'd be none of that. None of that at all, and Robert's body practically ached with physical longing, that place between his hips tingling angrily, his hands yearning to touch himself to relieve some of the uncomfort.

He threw his head back further into his pillow and stared up at his ceiling, wondering bitterly for a moment if those warnings Papa had hinted at years ago were true at all: Did self-satisfaction really cause delirium? Weakness of mind? It was certainly weakness of spirit, he understood that well enough, but surely he'd be forgiven. After all, men who wrote these rules hadn't had an American wife - an American wife who did not want to bear his child. His heir.

With a frustrated groan, the thought rose up again in his head, arching its back and hissing at him. And fighting back, Robert slipped his fingers beneath his waistband and felt for himself, a pleasurable guilt washing through him.

"Robert?"

Quickly, he pulled in a breath, pulled up the covers, and pulled his hand away from his shame, jerking his head to his wife's quiet voice. The dividing door slid against the carpet.

"I hope I'm not waking you."

Robert shook his head no, gripping the covers to his waist, hiding himself. Her face gave no hints of suspicion, her features soft and golden in the reflection of the flames.

"No," he managed at last. "Did you need something?"

Cora was quiet for a moment, her body still mostly in the threshold of the room, her lips curling into a tight smile. "Oh, no. Only I wanted to remind you of the interviews tomorrow morning. For the maid."

Bitterly, Robert rolled his eyes, sure she'd notice. "Of course I won't be there. Mama did tell you."

In his periphery, Robert saw her nod slowly, her lips parting slightly. "Yes. Sorry."

The coolness in his chest blistered. And yet he could find nothing to say.

He kept his eyes trained on his duvet for a long moment, the quiet between them icing over, frost lingering and cracking though the fire popped and snapped. Too quiet. Much too quiet, until at last, she broke, speaking.

"Then, good night, Robert."

He brought his chin toward her and nodded, but could not meet her eyes.

And as she shut the door again, it was not anger or bitterness he felt. No, no. He realized with some strange unease that it was not any of those feelings that created the coolness in his chest. No. The feeling was not anger at all.

* * *

It lasted throughout the day, the feeling from the night before. It was an uncomfortable sensation that Robert soon found made every bite he'd eaten and every sip of tea he'd imbibed throughout the hours turn sourly in his stomach. And dinner was certainly no different. In fact, it was worse. Much worse.

With his mother sitting to his left, his father to his right, Cora directly across from him, and King Charles's white horse turning its head down behind him, nearly coming through the painting above the buffet and over his head, Robert's mouth went dry as he chewed the chicken he tried to eat, the meat turning to cotton in his mouth.

The room was much too quiet. The tinkering of silver on porcelain screamed out before him, the quiet din of the dining room proclaiming that something was not quite right, that, once again, something ugly was swimming beneath the glassy surface of their conversation. Oh rather, lack thereof.

It was just the four of them at the table - it was much too frequently just the four of them and their servants in this huge room - and the quiet, and the space, and the tiny, devilish whisper in Robert's head that it could very well be just the four of them for much longer than he'd like, suddenly made him strangely claustrophobic. Lifting his chin in some vain attempt at loosening his collar, he reached for his glass of claret.

His movement must have caused a ripple of attention, for as Robert pressed the remnants of the wine between his lips, Papa cleared his throat.

"I hope you had some luck today."

The table remained quiet though Papa had spoken. Mama pursed her lips as she cut into another bite of chicken; Cora, Robert noticed, pulled in a long deep breath, and held it.

Papa allowed a few minutes more of quiet to settle over the four of them before, again, he made some strange precursor of sound, like an uncomfortable grumble, and spoke.

"Walters says there were quite a number of applicants. Were there any you liked, particularly?"

Both Robert and his father looked to Walters standing at the corner of the rug, and Robert even softened his features in a forced sort of smile, but like before, Cora remained silent and still.

"Yes." Violet answered tersely, and put down her fork and knife. When she picked up her glass, Robert understood that the conversation was over.

Cora, it seemed, did not. "Though we are still deciding."

"We've selected a few we like," Mama did not look Cora's way, "Ones that fit the correct qualifications."

"- your qualifications." Cora's voice, had it not been so quiet, would have gone unnoticed. Unfortunately, when only four dine at a table, most nothing goes amiss.

"The qualifications that befit a proper Lady's Maid. Which, I did try to explain this morning before they arrived," Violet put down her glass and her eyes flitted to the footmen around them. "But we won't discuss it now, Cora -"

" - Not now, no. In front of the applicants seemed perfectly acceptable -"

"- Cora." Mama's eyes, which Robert had fully expected to show anger and scorn, did not. Wide as they were, they went to Cora for only a moment, and then back again to the footmen and Walters before settling again on her plate. "We'll discuss it later. We mustn't bore everyone."

 _Everyone._

The word hung over the table like a pall, and it drug up the unidentifiable emotion that tightened in Robert's throat. He swallowed down the tightness and looked across to Cora; he found that she, too, was looking across to him. At contact, she broke away, blinking rapidly, her hands working beneath the table at her serviette. He felt hot, flustered, and reached for his wine, once again the four of them descending into silence, the forks and knives loud and terribly, terribly unsettling.

* * *

Cora didn't stay for drinks after dinner; she didn't set foot in the library at all. Robert watched her as they left the dining room, her direction straight and purposeful as she headed for the stairs. Mama saw, too, and audibly sighed behind him; she continued to move toward the library, leaving whatever had happened earlier to work itself out. And like a fool, Robert turned as well and followed his parents into the library, even though the soft glow of Cora's face from the night before immediately came to mind.

Now, three whiskeys later, Robert stumbled as he climbed the darkened stairs to his dressing room, alone. The painting on the landing seemed to stare at him as he climbed, and the red carpet beneath his feet shuffled and sighed.

He did not imagine this six months ago. Six months ago, when he watched as she signed her name on the contract, when he took that same hand and slipped the little golden ring on her finger, when he watched her smile to herself as his cousin bounced baby Patrick on his knee, he fully expected things to be different. He didn't know much about...about all of that, but he didn't think it would take so long. He didn't think the two of them would have any difficulty, that Cora's smooth, flat stomach would be happily swollen at this point. He didn't think she would want to stop, want to wait.

He didn't think.

Pausing at his door, staring at the knob, Robert's eyes widened in small surprise that he'd gotten here without his realizing it, and they twitched, itchingly. Slowly, he looked toward the door immediately to his right, the door which would lead him to her. To Cora. And with the warmth of whiskey in his belly, and with the tightness of his throat still laced with the feeling he still could not name, his feet moved on their own, and his hand turned the knob of her room, pulling open the door.

Pushing his shoulder on the green back of the next, the door was opened. The midnight colors of her room, darkened blues and golds and peachy-pinks, twinkled and Cora, dressed in her long, white nightgown, paused at her bedside, a sheet she was pulling back held tightly in her hand.

"I'm sorry for pushing in," he heard himself say to her, and he immediately regretted it. Her face grew hard and her eyes grew cold.

He cleared his throat and looked about the room, but not really focusing on one thing. The small candlelight by her bed cast her shadow on the opposite wall and Robert watched it dance for a moment before looking away again.

"Did you need something?"

His words from the night before were made harsher from her lips, and when he looked at her he could see she knew precisely what they had meant. It was not a question.

"Cora, I only, only wanted to come and...and see -"

She moved, pulling back her covers and climbing into her bed as if she were not listening, as if he were not there at all, opening her book and flipping - nearly tearing - the pages to where her bookmark rest.

"- I wanted to see how you were."

"Is that so." She did not give him her gaze.

"Yes. I don't know what occurred earlier today, but -"

Her book was slapped closed, and even in Robert's bumbling state, he saw how pointedly she stared at him now. "But you are aware something _did_ happen. You're aware that I was, that I _am_ , upset."

He opened his mouth and began to say something, anything to mollify her, but she continued to speak instead.

"I don't understand it; I just don't understand it."

"What?" He took a step forward, and he reached out for the bed to steady himself.

"Please."

When Robert looked up again, he saw that she was no longer looking at him. The line of her jaw had softened, her brush of lashes fluttered down toward her book, and her lips dipped into a nearly imperceptible frown. The flicker of the candle from her nightstand made a sort of halo around her loosened curls, a sort of aura of gold around the contours of her profile, and Robert suddenly had the strongest urge to capture her this way, somehow, to enclose her just this way in a frame with golden rosebuds.

"Don't say anything now..."

Her voice startled him, as if he had forgotten she was physically there at all, and it made the feeling, that strange, curious sensation lurking around his ribs, flutter.

"...it'd be for the best if we both just went to sleep."

"Cora -"

She closed her eyes, and Robert felt the flutter grow heavier, a certain panic seeping in. Why? Why? He wasn't sure.

"Good night." And like before, her voice did not mean the words it spoke, the sentiment lost completely as it left her lips.

Robert turned slowly away from her. He looked at the dividing door in the dim light, and then at the chest of drawers beside it. There were white roses there, and petals had fallen.

"Good night," he whispered and moved toward the door.

Inside his dressing room was chilled and eerily quiet. The curtains were still pulled apart and the long window allowed moonlight in, streams of silver spilling over the glass case of his snuff boxes, the little blue one twinkling in the light.

He needed to ring for Charles. He needed to dress for bed, needed to rest for early morning rounds with Papa, but something stilled his fingers from searching for the pull. Something kept resounding what she had said, that he had known she was upset. That she didn't understand.

Robert sighed. They didn't, did they? They did not understand one another, and the acknowledgement set an ache in Robert's chest.

Sighing, Robert moved again to her room, and he forced away second-thoughts as he maneuvered through the doors, as he went again into her space, finding to his small surprise that it was dark, that her candle had been blown out. The silver from his window seeped in behind him, though, and her silhouette as she rose from her mattress was kissed by it in the dark.

"Robert?"

He didn't know quite what he was doing, but he was certain he would do it.

He moved to her bed, wordlessly, but thinking so loudly, so loudly he was sure she could hear him. The way her features - those pale feature made into moonbeams by the milky light around them - warmed over, softening; the way her chest suddenly rose and fell, she knew what he was coming toward her for.

And so he climbed upon her bed, and without ceremony, threaded his fingers through her curls, pulling him toward her.

It was the courage of whiskey, he knew it, and what was more, she knew it, too, he supposed, the way she broke away and whispered his name again, as if asking if he were cognizant of his actions.

But he didn't care. He wanted her; touching her, feeling her beneath him, it made the sensation he'd felt throughout the day rise up and turn into a heat, a pounding delicious heat that whispered out a word he wasn't sure he should say aloud. Instead, he poured the word into his fingers, into his hips, into his tongue as it found her own.

Her hands worked at his shirtfront, the too-stiff collar coming loose at her touch. His waistcoat, his braces - these things fell away, melted away, her room spinning and moving away from them, her bed their only anchor to the earth.

Her skin was warm beneath her cool gown, it was smooth, it was velvet beneath the tips of his fingers. Hazy as it was, the things around him all a blur, he could feel every detail of her body. He could feel the way her flesh rose, prickling sweetly behind the trail of his touch. He moaned at the soft swell of her breast when he cupped it in his hand, the rosy peak of it turning to a pearl in his palm. Her name was all he could think, and he whispered it onto her lips.

And she whispered his in return.

The buckle of his trousers was now undone, and moving more to the center of her bed, he lost his underthings as well, his own hands now freeing her of her nightgown, the curves of her body too like a painting he'd seen in a book as a boy, a schoolboy's first glimpse of a woman's naked form. His throat rumbled with a noise he didn't think to make, and he wrapped his hand around the small of her back, her waist nearly fitting into the spread of his fingertips. And he heard her echo the sound he'd only just made.

She wanted him. She wanted him here as much as he wanted her, and the realization of it spurred him on, his other hand guiding her legs apart so that he could fall between them.

He kissed her deeper, her mouth altogether salty and sweet; her tender palms touched his cheeks, his jaw, and her nails dug into his hair, pulling it.

"Darling…" he heard himself say, and Cora answered with a moan, another turn of a kiss.

He took it as her welcoming, and he pushed inside of her.

Oh, inside him was all the warmth and lightness that only came of this, from their joining, somewhere deep within himself flipping and turning slowly, as if it were all a dance beneath water. Gravity had no power here.

Her hips moved against him, her mouth opening and gasping softly as he pushed further into her.

"Cora," he said again, and he moved his lips to her ear, letting them rest lightly against the lobe. "Cora, darling."

She moaned again, and he buried his face in her neck, taking in her scent as he moved inside of her.

His heart beat out that whisper again, and again, and again, and he felt his lips mouthing the word, telling her without sound, breathing it against her skin: _I love you. I love you._

Oh, God. He did love her. He did love her, he did. And he grew closer as he thought it, as one of her hands traced across his shoulder blade, a white petal falling onto the tabletop.

"Please," he heard her between her breaths. "I don't -"

Oh, but it was now - surprising even himself, he nodded against her, pulling himself away from her just when he wanted to be inside her most.

And afterward, as he caught his breath, he felt her lips pressing lightly over his cheekbone, his eyelids, his jaw, her kisses covering his face. Her kisses covering his smile.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six**

 _December 1962_

The new housekeeper always left a fresh cup of coffee by his bedside each morning. Shirley was good at that, he supposed. Every morning at a quarter to seven, she'd knock twice, smile at him as she peered around the door, and then place the hot cup of coffee right there, right within arm's reach. It only irked him a little at first that sometimes the small tray she should bring it in on was missing, but one couldn't expect too much from her, not in this day and age. She was no Bates, after all, nor Barrow, and she was certainly no Carson. And the longer Robert watched her in the dim light as she moved about his room, he realized what change ten or really twenty years had made. She was no butler, though they had one. For the duties and responsibilities of the housekeeper and the butler had begun to blend and blur together as of late. Jeremy Hodges, their current butler, was very good at his job - very knowledgeable and exact - and that was in the end his downfall. He'd been stolen away from Robert, Mary needing him more and more to head the administrative side in the business of opening the house. So he didn't see Hodges very often anymore. Mary had him locked up in some office on the estate, completing necessary paperwork and interviews in order to legally turn profit on a private home.

Or maybe it was that Robert had very little to do with the running of it all anymore...maybe it was in fact quite opposite and it was Hodges who now saw so little of him, his role in everything quite unnecessary. Robert didn't particularly like that thought, even if something deep in his belly knew it to be true, and so he returned his attention to his housekeeper who was moving his slippers nearer to the bed.

So it was to be Shirley and no true butler. And he was grateful for her.

He was so grateful, in fact, that he even allowed her to help him into his housecoat, which he usually insisted on doing himself, thanking her quietly as she reminded him not to let his coffee grow cold.

She continued on then with the typical idle chit chat as she drew open the curtains and got down his heavy coat and winter shoes. Robert wasn't really listening to her, though. He could hear her, but try as he might, he couldn't really follow her thoughts as they bounced from one superficial subject to the next. Even responding to it was rather difficult. Instead he sat upright in his bed, his eyes following her around his room, but his mind surveying the effects of another restless night's sleep. He felt like he was somewhere inside himself, not trapped really, but strangely aware of his body in ways he hadn't been before. Strangely aware and unable to escape his newfound awareness.

"Don't forget your coffee, Lord Grantham. You do hate it cold."

Robert nodded, her voice somehow getting through the thick fog of his mind and he brought the cup up slowly to his lips, the liquid burning them softly, and took in a sip. He knew there was a taste there, a flavor, but he also knew it was really there now only in his memory, the warm earthy smell and the bitterness that would nip at a younger man's senses were no longer present for him; he swallowed the sip he took down.

He lifted his eyes to his housekeeper and found her grinning at him.

"I'll put your gloves here," she tapped the glass case across the room, the case where the ticket rested. "Your woolen gloves, your scarf, and your hat."

He nodded at her again, but his eyes moved past her. Even in the pre-dawn winter light, the faded yellow ticket drew him in. He was younger there; the touch of his younger self remained. The touch of _her_ remained as well. Young, so terribly terribly young. How were they ever so young?

"It is very cold out this morning, my lord. Your gloves, scarf, and hat, just here, alright?" Shirley walked toward him, and he tore his eyes away from the ticket and over to her. "I'll be back up shortly to fetch your cup and bring your stick."

Robert hummed his thanks and took another flavorless sip of coffee.

* * *

Sybbie rubbed her hands together as she approached the stairs. It was brisker this morning than it had been since she arrived and a shiver ran through her even beneath her woolen top. She shrugged her shoulders, shaking away the cold, and looked around her before she stepped onto the bottom step. The voices of the dozen people that she left at the breakfast table lingered around her with a warmth, and for a moment she felt the chill of the old house disappear. But as she climbed, the warmth faded, and the chill of her thoughts began to nip at her.

She hadn't slept well. Images of the days before threatened to wake her and she fought, as she laid in the dark, against the urge to go down into the library for a drink. In years - many years - past, she knew she would've found Donk there on the red sofa, still in his bowtie and pressed shirt from dinner, nursing a short tumbler of some amber drink. In her memories, he held a brief smile as a welcome, and then patted the cushion beside him. Of course that was too long ago now to say, decades even, and the house had changed since then. Or perhaps it was Donk who'd changed.

Or perhaps...perhaps it was herself.

It wasn't until she heard shuffling and movement in a bedroom at her left that she realized she stood on the gallery, looking stupidly at the light that bounced around from the vaulted ceiling above. She shook herself awake, blinking away the shadows of uglier thoughts before she turned and watched as Shirley came through the doorway, her hands full of a bathroom's trash.

"Oops!" the gray-haired woman laughed when she noticed her, and Sybbie smiled back, attempting warmth.

"G'morning, Mrs. Langston. I didn't know you'd be up again already. Just taking away the rubbish."

For a moment, while Sybbie smiled absently toward the new-age housekeeper, she thought of Mrs Hughes, of Daisy, of Anna, and she shuddered at the contrast thirty-five years had made. They would've done it quietly, without ceremony, dignified and yet almost invisibly, old Mr Carson's giant brows lifting in appreciation of a job well done.

"That's all right," she heard herself say, her voice suddenly sounding very Americanized, a decade abroad staining her syllables. She cleared her throat and smiled again. "And good morning."

Oh, what was wrong? The past was eating away at her flesh, her skin smoothing and shrinking down into the girl she was in these halls. Ghosts of her family slept in the corners of the ceilings; she could feel them peering down at her in a way that seemed to grow with every passing year. Was it that she had abandoned them? Atlanta was not Downton. Georgia was not Yorkshire, and America was certainly not England. There was no quiet at home, there was no Ancient Earl who trekked every morning, through the mist and flowers and rain and snow, to see the tombstone of his wife. There were no freezing mornings, no giant hearths, no crests of families detailing the chronicles of hundreds of years, of lines of her family - the only family she'd ever known - on her foyer's walls. And that feeling that grew and grew inside her at every Christmas, at every New Year, the feeling that she dreaded and the feeling that she ignored when she was away again ached in her throat.

Perhaps it was guilt.

Perhaps it was guilt that sank in her belly as she walked back toward her father's old room - the room in which she was born. The room where her mother had died. Why that made it more special to her, and why it made her feel more guilt, she couldn't understand.

She stopped in the hall, and she pulled in a deep breath. The house smelled of dust. Of soot. It smelled of tobacco and very faintly of perfume - of jasmine. And although her mind immediately thought of Granny, her heart thought of Donk _._ She thought of the way his trembling hand had held to the little yellow ticket, how his eyes had tried to name the people in the photographs...she thought of the long string of pearls.

Sybbie turned and retraced her steps, walking to the end of the hall to her grandmother's bedroom. She only needed a moment alone in there, a moment alone with her.

Quietly, she opened the door, and then the next. It swung open easily, without a sound. Inside the room was just as silent, the door to Donk's former dressing room opened slightly, the curtains pulled open completely, the morning made brighter by the glare of snow, but not clearer. It was a gray glare that reflected on all of Granny's blue walls, and it hurt Sybbie's eyes.

But ignoring it, she went to the far window, picked up a stack of papers, and she sat down.

It constituted a very small portion of what she imagined her grandmother's things to be and realized with a certain sadness that most of her things - not her books or jewelry or photos but her own things she'd written and folded and tucked into her tiny clutch purses - must have already been sorted through, that people who did not know her the way _she_ had had determined the fate of those things. The fate of Granny's lingering existence.

Growing uneasy, Sybbie shuffled agitatedly through the stack of mostly letters and then put them by her side, back onto the sill where she assumed they'd stay - it would make the room more personable for visitors.

Brisking her hands together again, this time less to do with the cold and more to do with the agitation she felt in her joints, Sybbie's eyes were drawn to her right, toward the slightly ajar door that was once Donk's dressing room. She caught herself staring, for a little longer than she realized, at the darkness in there and wondered briefly if his room would be opened as well. Likely not, she had decided nearly as quickly as she had wondered, for the room, even in her memories, had little life. It was Granny's room where she saw Donk most. It was Granny's room where the family seemed to gather, if not in the drawing room. Sybbie looked back around her, at all the blue. Granny's room.

"It just seems rather unfair, is all -"

Sybbie looked up at the sound several doors away, and she tipped her head. Not wanting to be found shuffling through papers, she stood and began to make her way quietly out of the room. She slipped through the small space she made for herself and then stepped quietly into the hallway, listening to the voices down the hall. She moved slowly toward them.

"I'm not sure, Coconut. Granny seems to think it in good taste, and I wouldn't dare contradict your Granny."

George. And Coco. Sybbie could hear their footsteps on the carpeted walk before she saw them, George walking purposefully into her direction, Coco walking close behind. Sybbie shook off as much of her gloom as possible and lifted her chin.

"Daddy, I -"

" - Good morning, Georgie. Coco. I didn't see you at breakfast."

At the apparent surprise at the sound of her voice, their eyes shot up to the her face and she smiled, coming to a stop before them.

"You look serious," she commented as her eyes flitted from her cousin to his child, Coco wide-eyed and pink-cheeked.

"We've gotten a letter finalizing the details of the paper's visit."

Sybbie raised a brow. "Oh?"

Coco shifted beside him, "Yes. It'll be this time next week, just in time for the Christmas decorations."

Sybbie hummed, waiting for her to continue, and when she did not, Sybbie furrowed her brow and asked, "And I suppose all the documents are in order for the article, then? About the house?"

Coco, however, sighed. "Yes. Not that it'll matter now."

"Has Aunt Mary changed her mind about it after all?" Sybbie looked at George now, but neither answered her. Instead, Coco turned toward the stairs and began to descend. And as she began to move away, tapping the letter against her skirt, George sighed heavily. It was a sign he'd change the subject.

"Paul finally find some warmth last night? Grace said that Shirley had searched out an electric blanket." He followed after his daughter, and because Sybbie was happy to think of better things, she followed him.

"Yes. Actually he's still asleep. It's the latest he's slept in years. Breakfast will be cleared away before he's even shown his face."

"Is it that late?" He stopped on the landing and looked at his watch. "What time do you have?"

"Oh," the change of conversation was enough to make her dizzy, but stopping next to him she answered, "Nearly half nine."

"Really?" George picked up his pace again, this time rushing down the rest of the stairs in staccato bounces, Coco even watching him from where she spoke with Shirley on the ground floor. He moved past them toward the library. "Uncle Tom?"

Sybbie was more confused than ever. She glanced at her young cousin who asked Shirley for the time. George and Tom came out of the library and back into the hall.

"Go and find your Gran, Co," George said quietly and then asked Shirley to find his coat and gloves.

"Oh, dear. Not again," the housekeeper muttered to herself as she turned, and Sybbie stepped forward.

"What's wrong?"

No one answered her. Instead there was a silent sort of understanding amongst them. There was the choreography of a dance Sybbie had never heard of, the members of her family moving and turning to some music that baffled her.

Again, she spoke up. "Dad?"

But nothing. Aunt Mary strode into the hall now.

"I'll drive and fetch him. I am sure he's just stopped off in the village -"

"He's not stopped off somewhere, Mary," Tom interrupted as he pulled on his coat. "This makes one time too many. You know it as well as I, and I'm sorry but -"

"Uncle Tom," George was behind him, Shirley having gathered his winter things and George taking the scarf and wrapping it around his neck. "Not now. We can talk about it after we find him. Mother, I'll drive. You come with me. Uncle Tom -"

Sybbie's father nodded, "Right, I'll drive up towards Pip's Corner first if you go straight to the churchyard along his route. Mary -" at this Sybbie watched, her heart now beating too hard inside her chest, as her father pointed a finger at his sister-in-law, "this can't happen again. You'll tell him."

But her aunt only shook her head as Sybbie watched them flood to the door. "I won't tell him, Tom. And besides even if I did, I don't believe he'd listen anyway."

"He'd listen to you, Mother," George was saying as the three of them walked away from the hall and outside into the snow. "If no one else, he'd listen to you."

Sybbie stood still for a moment after they left, watching their backs as Shirley and Coco did near her. It was only when the movement of Shirley quickly rubbing Coco's back appeared in her periphery did Sybbie's trance crumble.

She walked towards them. She could hear her sons in the drawing room; Benjamin was laughing. She sensed Paul slowly coming down the stairs. However all these things seemed muted or dulled in comparison to the worry she felt swelling in her throat.

"What's happening?"

Coco glanced at her but then back to the door. She flicked the envelope she held. "You should ask _her_ ," she frowned.

"Now, my dear -" Shirley tilted her head, but Coco pulled in a deep, agitated breath.

"She doesn't care! I thought it was about the house. I didn't think she was using Donk as some sort of advertising or … or publicity. That's why she doesn't care if he catches … catches pneumonia or … or freezes to death out there when he loses his way again."

"You're overreacting, Love -"

Sybbie shook her head, "Again?"

But Coco had broken away, shoving the opened letter into Shirley's hands.

"Oh Mrs Langston," Shirley sighed, smoothing out the envelope in her hands. She glanced toward the delighted voices of children calling to go out and play, and Sybbie waited for her explanation. "They have to watch for him, you see." She made eye contact again. "He tends to wander off after visiting her nowadays. He doesn't mean to, he just …" her voice got smaller. "He forgets, your grandfather does. He'll forget and get lost."

Paul's hand on her shoulder startled Sybbie and she turned her head to look over her shoulder. His eyes were soft, and the greens of them were warm, full of pity. She felt angry.

"You missed breakfast," she snapped, and pushed past both her husband and Shirley. A more logical part of her brain saw herself as the mirror image of her sixteen-year-old cousin, but Sybbie really didn't care.

* * *

He felt tired. He knew that much. He felt tired and he felt cold. But he always felt cold. Old age was cold, he told himself, and he chortled once, sardonically.

Mary turned around to him from the front seat and drew up her chin. "Where did you plan to go?"

"Mother -" George was driving.

"Papa, what did you have planned? You must've had a plan."

George hissed at her again, but Robert ignored it. He ignored their hushed conversation, the one he assumed was about him. He ignored the way his mind shouted _respect one's elders_ because it was such an impossible thing to do. A person cannot be respectful of a fool. Kind to, loving, considerate of. But respect? That word was reserved for men of ability. Robert couldn't do anything anymore.

He couldn't.

He couldn't even recall what it was he couldn't do.

He was tired. He was cold. He turned his gaze toward the white blur of the scenery racing past him and worked his hand into his pocket.

The little yellow ticket was warm between his frozen, bare fingers.


End file.
